The member did not ask me to name the companies that were like that. I do not know why he would be so interested in having the unions named.
Continuing my thought, noble or villainous attributes cannot be ascribed to humans based on their station in life. People are not good or bad because they are in a union. They are not good or bad because they are in management in a company. Everybody is different. Everybody is a human being. There are good people and bad people.
There are those in the union movement—and I have seen this firsthand—who would put the individual rights of people at a much lower level than the collective rights of a union. That is the problem. When the union becomes so powerful that it has a right to tell individual workers what they can and cannot do, I have a great deal of difficulty.
I also have a great deal of sympathy for people who find themselves in a position of not having the right to exercise their individual right to decide whether or not they want to be in a union or out, whether or not they want to have a union representing them. I also have a great deal of sympathy for people who are forced to accept a course of action when it is not what they want.
We are talking here about a fundamental collision between collective rights and individual rights. Obviously in society we have both. We have individual rights which are very important and we have collective rights which the union movement represents. There are other collectivities as we know.
My colleagues in the Reform Party and I are much more interested in individual rights than any other rights. We want to promote the idea that the individual is the most important unit in society, not collective rights but individual rights, to the greatest extent possible. This is the very essence of democracy. It is individual rights. It is the right of the individual to choose. It is the right of the individual to vote. It is the right of individuals to have control over their own destiny and their own life.
It is not difficult for me to see that the Liberals do not understand this basic concept of democracy based on their actions of the last few days. It is easy to see that the Prime Minister does not understand that the House of Commons is supposed to be about democracy. It is supposed to be about the right of individual MPs to come here and represent their constituents and to vote according to their conscience.
The Prime Minister said to his backbenchers that if they do not do his will they will pay the consequences. That is why people on the other side do not understand the fundamental flaw in the bill before us. They do not fully appreciate the fundamental concept of democracy.
I was in the finance committee this morning. I was helping my friend from Medicine Hat who is a permanent member of that committee. We were going through the budget implementation bill clause by clause. During the course of debate it became apparent that the opposition MPs on that committee were totally frustrated and had found that the committee was basically nothing more than a side show. From the time the Reform Party has had a presence on that committee, which is going back five years, not one opposition amendment to a budget implementation bill has ever been accepted by that committee.
We hear members on the government benches talk about the wonderful work of committees, how it is a non-partisan way of people getting together and working in a spirit of co-operation. That is just a load of hooey. I have never heard anything more ridiculous in my whole life.
Members on the government side do not want opposition members on committee to have any real influence or to have any real impact. No way. The committees in parliament are nothing more than an opportunity to occupy backbenchers and opposition MPs, to keep them out of the government's hair. This is the government's view of democracy.
It is also the government's view of democracy that the people in the other place should not be elected but should be appointed by the Prime Minister and that we should not even be able to raise this matter in the House of Commons. Is it democracy if I cannot as a member of parliament come to the House and talk about the other place because I might be offending somebody?
It is not difficult to understand that our friends on the other side have not grasped the meaning of democracy. They have not grasped the meaning of individual rights and how those two are intertwined and cannot be taken one from the other.
The legislation does not provide individuals their proper and full individual rights when it comes to whether or not a union should represent them and whether or not they should be required or forced to join a union.
I recognize there are companies that are badly managed and do not properly consider or care for the rights of their workers. They deserve to have and actually need to have unions to protect the interests of the employees.
Union leaders are not always the noble people they are made out to be. It is very important that individuals in every circumstance have the opportunity, the right, to decide whether or not to be in a union or to have union representation. That should be based on a secret ballot. It should be based on the majority in a secret ballot making that determination.
The bill clearly does not provide for that and the Reform amendment clearly would give workers that right. That is what this set of amendments is all about. I appreciate the indulgence of the House and I will let my colleagues carry on from here.